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Thu 14 Jun 2007

Mon 18 Jun 2007: 1pm - Wong Siew Te on Sun Bears of Malaysia

Category : bejc

Meetings of the NUS DBS Biodiversity & Ecology Journal Club

"The ecology and conservation of the sun bear in Malaysia"

Wong Siew Te
Wildlife Biology Program,
College of Forestry and Conservation,
University of Montana
Missoula, MT 59812 USA

Mon 18 Jun 2007: 1pm - 2pm

NUS Dept Biol. Scis. Conference Room
Blk S3, Level 5, Department of Biological Sciences
The National University of Singapore
Science Drive 4
Visitors may park at Carpark 10
See map.

Host - N. Sivasothi
Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research, NUS

About the talk - In first half of the talk, Wong Siew Te will talk about the ecology and behavior of sun bear and his research works on sun bear in Sabah, Malaysia. The second part of the talk will focus on the threats and other conservation issues facing by the sun bear in Malaysia.

About the speaker - Wong Siew Te was born and raised in Penang, Malaysia. He earned a Diploma in Veterinary and Animal Science from National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, Taiwan, and both Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in Wildlife Biology from University of Montana, USA. He is now a Ph. D candidate in Fish and Wildlife Biology, University of Montana, and conducting his doctorate field study on Malayan sun bears (Helarctos malayanus) and bearded pigs (Sus barbatus) in Sabah, Malaysia. Wong studied the ecology of Malayan sun bears in a rainforest of Malaysian Borneo as his M.Sc. thesis project [online pdf of his thesis]. The study contributed our knowledge on many ecological aspects of sun bear and promoted various conservation issues related to Bornean rainforest.

Beside bears and pigs, Wong's interest also include the other medium and large mammals especially carnivores, the interactions between wildlife and tropical rainforest ecosystem, and mast fruiting in Southeast Asian. Wong was appointed as the first co-chair of the Sun Bear Expert Team for the IUCN/SSC Bear Specialist Group from 2002-2005. He is now member of IUCN/SSC Bear Specialist Group and Pigs, Peccaries, and Hippos Specialist Group.

Links

• Bornean Sunbear and Bearded Pig Research and Conservation Project - borneanbearpigproject.org; see Raffles Museum News, 11 Mar 2006
• "Fighting for survival," by Tan Cheng Li. The Star, 08 Aug 2006.
• "Friend of bears," by Tan Cheng Li. The Star, 08 Aug 2006.
• Wong, S. T., C. W. Servheena & L. Ambub, 2004. Home range, movement and activity patterns, and bedding sites of Malayan sun bears Helarctos malayanus in the Rainforest of Borneo. Biological Conservation, 119 (2): 169-181. [pdf].
• The Ecology of the Malayan Sun Bear (Helarctos malayanus) in the lowlandd tropical rainforest of Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. By Wong Siew Te. MSc thesis, The University of Montana, 2002. [pdf]
• Personal site - wongsiewte.org
• Land Empowerment Animals People webpage - leapspiral.org

Did you know? - The sun bear, Helarctos malayanus (Raffles, 1821) was first described by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (type locality "Sumatra") in:

Raffles, T. S. 1821. Descriptive catalogue of a zoological collection, made on account of the honourable East India Company, in the island of Sumatra and its vicinity, under the direction of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, Lieutenant-Governor of Fort Marlborough; with additional notices illustrative of the natural history of those countries. Transactions of the Linnaean Society of London, 13:239–274.

Posted at 12:11AM SGT by N. Sivasothi | permalink | ,